


when you're gone, all the lights go out

by labeledbones



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 14:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14334036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: You find yourself on the balcony of your hotel suite, with the phone pressed to your ear, the sound of it ringing and then: “Timmy?”A small bit of second person Timmy angst for this Coachella weekend.





	when you're gone, all the lights go out

You find yourself on the balcony of your hotel suite, with the phone pressed to your ear, the sound of it ringing and then: “Timmy?”

And you realize you have nothing to say. You realize you wanted only this: the sound of his breathing, your name in his mouth, how his teeth and tongue shape the two syllables. How you only sound right coming from the back of his throat. 

“Timmy?” he says it again, your name. You think it meant nothing before his voice.

“Hi,” you manage, stupid. You have no reason for calling, no piece of news to share, nothing you haven’t told him in a text he answered hours later. Your only reason for calling is to have him with you, to hold him in this moment with you. 

“Hi,” he says, laughing. You remember that he likes you ridiculous. He likes you desperate and strange, unsure and barely holding it together. You remember that he likes you. 

“Um,” you draw it out. The sun is just coming up. You’ve been awake for so long, but also you’ve been asleep. Everything is sleep now that you aren’t with him. Everything feels vague, dreamlike; nothing matters. 

You want to say the things you aren’t allowed to say: that you miss him, that you wish he was here, that you haven’t fucked anyone else since him, that you love him. 

“I wanted to hear your voice,” you say. You don’t know if that one’s allowed. “I guess,” you add, shrugging it off. 

“Well,” he says, and you can hear his eyes even though you know that’s insane. You can hear the color of his eyes, the curl of his eyelashes. In that one word you hear the lines at the corners of his eyes, those marks of his joy, his love. “This is my voice.” 

You’re laughing, sitting forward in your chair, wrapping your free arm around yourself, trying to hold him closer. 

“It is,” you say. “I’d almost forgotten.” 

A blatant lie. You’ve memorized everything about him. You carry him around with you everywhere. You close your eyes and conjure him, bring him to life on the backs of your eyelids. You can remember just how he smiled on a Thursday afternoon in Crema, how his eyes stormed on a Sunday morning in London, how his shoulders slanted against the wall of your apartment on a Saturday night in New York as he watched you get dressed. 

“It’s a good thing you called then,” he says. You press the collar of your jacket to your mouth and pretend it’s his shoulder, his throat. 

“Good thing,” you echo. 

He breathes in and you hold your breath. “I hadn’t forgotten yours,” he says. “For what it’s worth.” 

You breathe out. You close your eyes. 

“I hear you all the time,” he says. You don’t know how his voice can be so soft but cut so sharply into you. “Like this voice in my head. Sometimes I think I’m losing it.” 

You taste blood and realize you’ve been biting down hard on the inside of your cheek. 

“Don’t,” you say, helpless. He has so much and you only have him and it’s not fair. 

“I miss you,” he says. “That’s all.” 

Because he’s allowed these things. This is on his terms. You can miss each other if he says it first. 

“Do you miss me?” he asks your silence. His voice is teasing, because you’re a game to him. You feel fury and love battling in your chest. 

You wish you hadn’t called. You wish you had a cigarette. You wish you had his mouth against yours. 

“Yes.” And you can hear how much venom you’ve put into that small word.

“Say it,” he bites back. 

You both know how to turn your love into a weapon. 

“I have to go,” you say instead. You hang up on the sound of your name in his mouth again. 

You get up and lean into the balcony railing, looking out at California below you: a place that means nothing without him in it. 

Your phone rings and you ignore it. 

You turn it off. 

You turn it back on. 

You answer when it rings again. 

He says, “Can we start over?”

“Like, completely? Or just that phone call?” 

He laughs. You laugh. You love him and it hurts. You love him and it’s the only thing that doesn’t hurt. 

“Let’s go with just the phone call for now.” 

“Okay,” you say. “Hi.”

"Hi,” he says. 

And you want only this.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Be the One" by Dua Lipa, but [specifically this beautiful cover by Luna Shadows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeo60N0oPy4).


End file.
